Saturday, July 22, 2017

Country Music

I have been away for a week, and am just putting these up now. I have more to write about, but there is a lot to do around here. Maybe tomorrow.

Unable to get my usual stations on a recent drive I listened
to Darius Rucker’s country CD and a country station. Modern country music
continues to have a deep separation from the older style. Even “classic”
country music is pretty recent these days. More Leonard Skynard than George
Jones. The modern examples are mere recitations of Southern icons.Sweet tea! Sunsets! Live Oaks! Daddies! Bars
and Saturday nights! And boots, boots, boots everywhere.Ain’t we southern? Let’s work “Carolina” into
as many songs as possible. Just make sure you’ve got that pickin’ style, bent
notes, and the accent in there. There’s not much content, just a checkbox
listing of Southern items.

I wonder what the equivalent would be for New England?Many decades ago New England, especially
Maine, also had country music, before Roy Acuff decided that Nashville was
going to become not just a center but
the center. Had all that played out
differently, what would be New England icons songwriters would put in to show
that they were real New England? To
even make the list is to sound silly, because maple syrup, beans, or lobster
don’t naturally lend themselves to any verse but comic. Cape Cod and Boston,
maybe, but not much else conjures the way a hundred place-names in the south
do. Part of that may just be volume. People from Vermont are gratified when
entertainers mention them, but they applaud a bit and nod approvingly rather
than whoop and holler. (Okay, some of the boys did whistle loudly and cheer but
we pretended not to notice.) People drink in New England, and drink hard, but
they don’t seem to write songs about it.Check that.Sometimes the Irish
do, but we associate that with Irishness, not New England.

I’m not sure how you’d even write the song about how
thoroughly New England your girl is, and every guy in the bar knows it.Bean boots? Tough to dance in, but maybe if
she’s just standing in line.Ski boots,
even worse, but skis might a
marker.My gal and her Rossignols. Mother walks into the diner and orders fish
chowder.Walkin’ through the Berkshires,
my Daddy told me… Hey, now, James Taylor did get “the turnpike from Stockbridge
to Boston” in there. That’s a start. We have trains and people even ride them,
but there aren’t any songs about “Waiting on the Old Acela Line,” nor does
anyone think you are authentic just because you said “Acela.” Offer some
guesses as to what this contrast means.

Country music used to be about stories, “three chords and
the truth.” It was a first cousin to western music, and second cousin to folk
music. It was an art of those writers and performers to get you to care, and
deeply, before the first verse was over. Its vanishing may be one more signal that the
underlying Southern country culture is disappearing, leaving only a few
decorative items behind. Many ethnic groups had celebrations when I was
younger, but they eventually became hollow, dragging a few kids out and
stuffing them in costumes and making them do a dance or two. A few foods kept
alive. Pierogies.Baklava. Corned Beef.

I wouldn’t think those country music images are going
anywhere soon, and the underlying culture – whatever that actually is - will persist a while.It’s a big area, with a lot of people in it, and there’s a pile of money
to be made still. Yet it will be increasingly Disneyfied, celebrated in
circular fashion for being itself.

7 comments:

My favorite thing about New England is beans for breakfast. I never see beans served with breakfast except in places like New Hampshire -- or Wyoming, where they are a very different sort of beans. But I like both.

Over the years, in expressing my enthusiasm for Bob Wills, I unearthed some interesting connections to Al Striklin, one of Bob's "piano pounders." The father of a student of mine went to school in Cleburne with a son of Al Striklin. For years on Friday nights I met a group for drinks at a local bar. One of the group was an eight-something guy whose primary money earner was renting out houses he built himself. Call him a cantankerous libertarian. For decades, he played sax in a dance band- until shortly before he died. One time when I talked about Bob Wills, he told us that when his band played in the Dallas area, the band often used a replacement piano player from the Dallas area, who used to play for Bob Wills. By deduction- Cleburne is not far from Dallas- that replacement piano player must have been Al Striklin. (who died in '86- so we are talking about YEARS ago.)

I went to regional high school in NE. Those from the host town looked down on those from my more rural, less affluent, less educated hometown Dumb farmers and such. It still goes on, I hear. That's OK, I can say "suburban shitheads" right back.

And I did feel pity for those whose neighbors were a hundred feet or less away, whereas mine were a quarter mile or more away. I could walk out my parent's door and walk east or west for a mile before I hit a road. When I got within 40 miles of Boston I started to feel claustrophobic.

I learned a valuable lesson from it: we all from in-groups and out-groups. None of us is free from prejudice.

The same album has a nice bit called "the motorcycle song." It's more folk than country, we might say today, but it's very plausibly a kind of northeastern Outlaw Country. It's of the same generation as Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash, or even Johnny Paycheck; actually, Arlo was a bit younger than them.